Effect of Climate Change on Hurricane Damage and Loss for Residential Buildings in Miami-Dade County

Abstract

This paper investigates the potential effect of climate change on future hurricanes and the corresponding losses in residential buildings. Four climate change scenarios projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 213 are adopted. Specifically, the effect of sea surface temperature on hurricanes generated in the North Atlantic Ocean and making landfall in Florida is studied, which is then used to observe the impact of the change in sea surface temperature caused by climate change on future hurricane damage and loss for Miami-Dade County. It is found that when the North Atlantic sea surface temperature increases by a degree Celsius, the 3-s gust wind speed with a recurrence interval of 7 years increases by roughly 6.7–8.9 m/s for the county. This results in the accumulated hurricane loss for the county from 216 to 255 considering the climate change scenarios to be 1.4–1.7 times the value calculated based on 26 climate conditions.